Surgeon Down
by RoxyLily
Summary: Hawkeye is sent to Battalion Aid only to come back as one of the wounded.
1. Chapter 1

The 4077th M*A*S*H was peaceful, bearing no resemblance to its appearance just hours before. The ground that had been filled with frantic people, jumping from one bleeding body to another, moving them only to be replaced by yet another broken body, was now mostly empty, with its few occupants sluggishly making their way towards the various tents littered across it. No wounded were expected for the next few days. Three tired surgeons trudged out of Post Op and onto the compound, the taller two still in their blood soaked scrubs. Hawkeye yawned and stretched, looking ready to collapse after yet another 42 hour session of meatball surgery. He closed his eyes against the glaringly bright sun and reopened them to a squint trying in vain to both see and block out the sunlight he hadn't seen in almost two days.

"I could sleep for two days straight." BJ declared to the sparsely occupied compound, looking much the same as his friend. Charles remained silent as the three of them made their way to their tent. He was much too tired to put effort into a conversation with two people, whose voices he had the misfortune of hearing, practically nonstop, for the past 42 hours.

Upon reaching the Swamp, Hawkeye immediately collapsed on his army issued cot, not even bothering to take off his mud and blood caked boots. His eyes shut well before he even hit the bunk.

"I think I'll sleep off the rest of the war." Hawkeye mumbled into his pillow. "Wake me when they declare peace."

Ignoring his two bunkmates, Charles walked over to his side of the tent with every intention of putting on a record, any one of his massive collection, to banish the last two days from his mind. Music helped him unwind and he definitely needed to unwind after a 42 hour OR session, or any OR session for that matter. Before his fingers could so much as graze the vinyl, he heard a voice from the other side of the tent growl, "Don't even think about it."

Charles turned around to face the owner of the voice, ready to give him a piece of his overtired mind but the words never left his lips. To his amazement he found BJ, glaring at him from the floor, where he was doing pushups. It hadn't taken Charles long to figure out that his bunkmates were insane, and he'd quickly learned to expect the unexpected and then some when it came to those two imbeciles, but pushups after 42 hours of surgery was something he never would've expected. And he had thought that BJ was the saner of the two. He was now beginning to think he was much too hasty with his earlier judgment. Deciding he was far too tired to argue, and that watching the cretin, whose brains were probably baked from his beloved Californian sun, was only increasing his weariness, Charles left the record player in favor of collapsing on his sad excuse for a bed. Not a minute later, an announcement crackled over the PA.

"Attention, Attention all senior staff report to Colonel Potter's office immediately for a senior staff meeting!"

Charles muttered something about a lack of decency and insufferable conditions before getting up and heading to Colonel Potter's office. BJ looked over at Hawkeye, who by looks of it was already asleep.

"Hawk, get up. Hawkeye. Come on we gotta go," but Hawkeye remained dead to the world despite his efforts.

"Hey Hawk!" He shouted as he threw a pillow at his best friend's head.

"What? What?" Hawkeye practically yelled as he shot up in bed, causing BJ to burst out laughing at his friend's startled reaction.

"Get up. We gotta go to the Colonel's office." BJ managed to get out among his laughter. Hawkeye groaned but didn't argue as he got up, a testament to his exhaustion. Together, the two surgeons left the Swamp and made their way to Colonel Potter's office in the silence of two people simultaneously on autopilot. They entered the office to find that Charles, Margaret, Father Mulcahy, and Colonel Potter were already waiting when they arrived. Margaret and Charles looked irritated to be there, Mulcahy looked confused, and Potter's face was grim.

"I could've sworn I put up the gone fishing sign." Hawkeye quipped.

"What's wrong Colonel?" BJ asked, noting the Colonel's expression as he and Hawkeye dropped into their usual seats on the far side of the room.

"I just got off the horn with Battalion Aid. It's raining shells by them and they need a surgeon on the double, theirs was killed."

"Oh god" Hawkeye said, the weariness in his voice no longer due to lack of sleep.

"Heaven rest his soul," Mulcahy said, his voice low in mourning for yet another casualty of the war.

"I already sent Radar to load up a jeep with medical supplies. Now whose turn is it to go?"

"It most certainly is not mine!" Charles snapped.

"It's mine Colonel," said Hawkeye, "but since Charles seems so eager to-"

"Not on your life, Pierce!" Charles sneered.

"Well, it was worth a shot." The ghost of his normal cheeky smile adorned Hawkeye's face but slid off as quickly as it had appeared. He turned back to Potter before asking, "You want me to leave now?"

"Yes they said they needed one pronto. They're being flooded with wounded and they're understaffed." Potter stated grimly. Hawkeye nodded and got up to leave.

"And Pierce," Hawkeye turned around, his hand still on the door, "be careful son."

"Aw Colonel, Give me some credit, you make it sound like I go looking for trouble."

"I'm serious Pierce, if you come back in more than one piece I'll have you cleaning Sophie's pen for the next month."

"Ah-huh, in that case I'll remind Radar to attach the training wheels to the jeep," and with that he left. Once he was out of earshot, Margret said, "Colonel, I'd like to volunteer to go with Captain Pierce. Surely they could use a nurse as well."

"No major, they only asked for a surgeon. I'm not offering extra, they're getting shelled pretty badly."

"How bad?" asked BJ, who was already beginning to worry for his best friend.

"Bad enough."


	2. Chapter 2

**I'm so sorry. I didn't think it would take me a year to update this story. Thank you to anyone still reading.**

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Driving along the endless maze of identical winding dirt roads, Hawkeye sang whatever songs that popped into his head, partly for his own amusement but mostly to keep himself from drifting off. During his stay at the aid station he had gotten, at best, two hours of sleep a night complements of the twenty-four hour enemy ammo orchestra. After four days of equally endless wounded, Hawkeye was informed that I Corps was sending a replacement surgeon and he could finally head back to his own unit. He left, relieved to escape the shelling and to finally get a full night's sleep- or whatever passed for that in Korea.

He was nearly at the 4077th, about a half an hour away as the jeep flies, when he came across a platoon of American soldiers trudging alongside the road.

"Anyone from Maine?" he asked as he slowed the jeep to talk to them.

"I'm from Vermont." The reply came from a soldier in the back who looked so young that Hawkeye did a double take to make sure he had seen correctly.

"Close but no cigar. It's ok kid, you shouldn't be smoking anyway, it's bad for your health."

"Where are you headed?" asked a soldier walking side by side with the engine of the jeep.

"Back to my unit. I'm a doctor with the 40-" Hawkeye started but was interrupted by the all too familiar sound of artillery pounding into the ground.

"Get down!" the platoon leader yelled, trying, but for the most part failing, to be heard over the shelling. "Take cover!"

Hawkeye stopped the jeep and jumped out, grabbing his medical bag instinctively. He dropped down to the ground, for once fully intending to following orders, when he noticed a soldier, not too far from him, who took some shrapnel to the stomach. Hawkeye slithered across the dirt road then the grass, using his elbows to drag himself towards the wounded soldier. Upon reaching him, Hawkeye was quick to reassure the soldier and assess the wound before treating him to the best of his abilities while on the field.

Realizing that the closest unit to them was indeed his own and that sending the wounded to an aid station first would be a waste of time, Hawkeye instructed the platoon's medic to call in the 4077th's choppers. He felt a twinge of guilt at sending the wounded to his unit when they were down a surgeon but it made the most sense to send them there. _Plus,_ he reassured himself, _I won't_ _be far behind. I'll lighten the load when I get there._

As soon as the shelling stopped, the unit started to get up and leave. They seemed to do it automatically, looking remarkably put together for a bunch of people who were just shot at. Hawkeye looked around, scanning the ground for more patients, and spotted two more. He told the medic to take the closer of the two before running off to treat the other soldier, who was lying farther back and panting through the pain of what appeared to be a leg wound. Hawkeye shook his head in disgust when he saw the kid's face, eyes shut in pain.

 _He can't be older than 18!_ he thought, mentally cursing the war for what must have been the fifth time that day. Hawkeye examined the leg, grateful that the shrapnel had the decency to steer clear of the kid's femoral artery.

"Doc?" the kid asked, his voice laced with fear and pain. "How bad is it? Am I gonna die?"

Until that moment, Hawkeye hadn't quite realized the grimace that had settled on his face while he thought about the war and the fact that the kid in front of him should be as far from it as possible. He looked down at the soldier, whose big brown eyes were wide with fear, and plastered what he hoped was a grin on his face.

"What? With this football injury? You'll be back in the game in time for the next quarter." Then, seeing that his words failed to drive the nervous look off the kid's face, he added on a more serious note, "What's your name kid?"

"Peters. Michael Peters."

"Don't worry Michael, you'll be just fine." The kid sighed in relief, letting the doctor's voice soothe him as he tended to the wound. "The choppers are on their way kid, and you've just got yourself a first class ticket to the best M*A*S*H unit in the country."

"Nurses and everything?"

"Especially," he said with a cheeky grin. "What other reason is there to go?"

Some of the anxiety that had lined Michael's face dissipated. In its place remained a grin that, though laced with pain, Hawkeye took as a minor victory. He would have to wait until he got back to camp before he could work on relieving the kid's pain.

Michael leaned back, letting out a sigh of relief. He closed his eyes, allowing the faint sound of the approaching choppers to soothe him. Hawkeye bound the wound with a hasty but secure knot. He chanced a glance at Michael's face, marveling at the kid's serene expression. He couldn't help but find the sight slightly bizarre. The fact that the sound that almost never failed to fill his heart with dread, the sound of chopper blades slicing through the air, could provide any level of comfort was unfathomable. To him, along with the other residents of the 4077, it was the sound of violence, almost always accompanied by the sight of butchered bodies. In the darkness of his tent, when the sounds invaded his dreams, it was easy to imagine that the chopper blades themselves were the cause of the ceaseless parade of wounded. However, to these kids out on the front lines, the ones who witnessed too many people getting shot in a day to kid themselves about the source of the violence, the sound that haunted his dreams was the sound of mercy.

"Doctor, I need your help here." Hawkeye turned towards the voice that was fighting to be heard over the steadily intensifying sound of the nearing choppers. He could see the medic across the field, still crouching beside the soldier he had left him with.

"Sit tight, kid," he said, patting Michael's uninjured leg before grabbing his medical bag and running off to assist the medic. Before he could even make it halfway across the field, the world around him exploded in a burst of shelling, drowning out the sound of choppers which were all he could hear a second ago.

He watched his jeep go up in flames a split second before the ground in front of him exploded as well. The impact of the explosion threw Hawkeye off his feet, propelling him to the ground where he landed on his back. Though the landing was rough enough to leave some nasty bruises, Hawkeye barely felt it. All he could feel was the burning pain of shrapnel tearing through his chest with ease. For a minute his vision whited out, the pain overloading his senses. It seemed as though someone had put a muffler on the world; he could hear another shell hit the ground but it sounded miles off. Then nothing.

When he opened his eyes, which he couldn't remember closing, tears clouded his vision. Whether the tears were a product of the pain or the bits of earth that had taken up residence in his eyes, Hawkeye couldn't be sure nor could he find it within himself to care. He struggled for breath but every movement ignited a burning sensation in his chest that he was sure could be caused by nothing less than a raging fire. He couldn't convince his lungs to work, no matter how hard he tried. He could feel every neuron in his brain yelling, _Breathe, damn it,_ but despite his body's urgent attempts to comply, he couldn't get any air. Every heaving breath that had once promised oxygen now only brought fire which burned through his lungs.

His hearing slowly restored itself but between the pain, which was far worse than anything he had ever experienced, and the panic of finding himself unable to breathe, his brain refused the extra effort of processing the sounds around him. It didn't take long for the lack of oxygen to cause his already clouded vision to swim before his eyes, going grey at the edges. The last thing he heard was sound of chopper blades, the sound of home, slicing through the air before he blacked out.

"Doc, are you okay?" The medic yelled across the field but he received no response. The only thing that he could hear was the sound of the choppers as they touched down on the war torn field. The medic could feel his heart pounding in his chest, the sound reverberating in his ears. He had needed help with the soldier's wound and now it seemed that he had yet another patient to tend to. He had lost sight of the doctor during the second round of shelling and he hadn't heard from him since. While that wasn't so surprising, it was practically impossible to hear anything over the sound of the choppers, he yet to see the doctor emerge from the plume of smoke that obscured his vision. The medic let out a sigh when he spotted someone walking towards him through the smoke but his relief was short lived. The figure soon split, revealing two chopper pilots and still no doctor.

The pilots wasted no time sprinting to the medic and assisting him as he finished tending to the wounded soldier. He left them to load the soldier onto one of the choppers, along with the kid with the belly wound, while he ran off to take care of the doctor. The medic choked on the dust filled air, which was starting to clear with the help of the chopper blades. His eyes watered and he shut them briefly only to trip head long over the doctor's supine form. He immediately felt for a pulse and was relieved to find one, rapid and weak as it was.

Finding it hard to see between the dust flying around the air and the tears streaming down his face as a result, the medic assessed the wound as fast as he could. The doctor's pulse was weak and his breathing was shallow at best. Wary of the debris and his inability to effectively shield his patient from it, not to mention the copious amount of blood escaping the wound, the medic was quick to apply the pressure bandage. He looked up as he was tightening the bandage, constricting all air and foreign matter from the wound, to see that the two pilots had loaded both patients onto the closer of the two choppers and were heading his way.

"There's another one back there." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the doctor's last patient. "A kid with a leg wound. Take him first then come back for this one."

The medic waited until they came back for the doctor before heading to board the closer of the two choppers. He climbed in and sat back resigning himself to the dreaded wait, unable to do anything but watch the battlefield fall away as the choppers rose above the field with the fallen of the battle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry again. I didn't mean for updating once a year to become a thing. Hopefully the next chapter will come a lot sooner. Thank you to anyone still reading this.**

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It was midday when Colonel Potter and BJ walked into Radar's office to find the young clerk crossing the length of the room in strides as wide as his short legs would allow. The frantic corporal stopped by the desk and picked up the phone only to place it back in the bag, unused, and resume his pacing.

"What's up, Radar? You look like you could use a week's worth of R&R," BJ said, bemused by the corporal's strange behavior.

"It's been too long. I don't know who to—" Though he had started off at a normal volume, Radar's voice gradually picked up, rising steadily with his agitation. He had momentarily paused his pacing to talk to them but soon resumed his original activity as though he'd never stopped. "I mean he could be anywhere!"

Colonel Potter placed a steadying hand on Radar's shoulder as he drew nearer, effectively rooting the corporal to one spot.

"Calm down," Potter said. He waited for Radar to steady his breathing, which had gone a bit ragged between the pacing and the sudden outburst, before gently adding, "What's wrong, son?"

"It's Captain Pierce," Radar squawked. His breathing was a bit more sedate than before, however his eyes remained wide with panic behind the dirty lenses of his glasses. "He should have been back over an hour ago!"

"Well? What happened to him?" BJ demanded. His jovial tone had vanished in an instant along with his almost ever-present, good-natured smile. Logically, he knew that he was being unfair to the corporal, who was, clearly, just as worried as he was. He also knew that Radar was not at fault for Hawkeye's absence, but his worry for his best friend overrode all conscious knowledge, leaving the young clerk to bear the brunt of his anger.

"That's the problem, sir, I don't know! I Corps called this morning and said that the aid station was getting a new surgeon. I was gonna call to find out where he is but I'm not sure who to call first—I Corps, the aid station, or the MPs? You don't think he went AWOL, do you? When Major Burns was late he never came back."

"Burns was half outta what was left of his mind, and he started off with less brains than my horse. Call the aid station first." The colonel's commanding voice made him sound far more calm and collected than he felt. "Pierce wouldn't desert without a good reason and at least half a temper tantrum to go along with some harebrained scheme. He probably just stayed behind to help with the wounded."

Radar merely nodded. He looked pale and drawn with his mouth clamped shut as though he suspected he'd vomit if he so much as attempted to open it. He picked up the phone nonetheless but froze before he could test the theory.

"Choppers?" BJ asked, taking note of the motion that everyone in the 4077th grew accustomed to seeing from the company clerk within their first week of arriving at the unit.

Radar nodded again. BJ cursed under his breath and turned on his heel.

"You'll call after the wounded," Colonel Potter called over his shoulder, following BJ, who was already out the door. "Figures. It's like they know I'm down a surgeon," he muttered to himself.

It didn't take long for Radar to find his voice because soon it could be heard amplified across the compound. "Attention. Attention all personnel! Choppers! We got wounded!"

Not a minute later, the harsh sound of chopper blades filled the air. The once nearly empty compound was now crawling with people running in every direction, resembling a colony of busy ants to the few people watching from the choppers above.

On the helipad, there were already nurses and corpsmen standing on the sidelines, waiting to assist the doctors as soon as the two choppers landed. BJ arrived on the helipad followed closely by Colonel Potter, both of whom were huffing and puffing from the sudden unexpected exertion. There they met Charles, who would've rather modeled the latest of the Klinger Collection while eating yesterday's hash out of a bedpan before admitting that a Winchester could get winded.

A thick cloud of dirt rose to meet the chopper in the last third of its descent, obscuring both the vehicle and its passengers from view.

"Winchester," Potter called over the din of the blades, "you take the far chopper. Hunnicutt, you're with me." Winchester afforded the colonel with a curt nod before walking towards his assigned chopper. BJ gave no indication that he even heard the colonel. His eyes remained trained on the choppers but his mind was undoubtedly elsewhere.

Together, the captain and colonel approached the nearby chopper, where a soldier with a leg wound lay. He was shifting around though, with his face obscured by the plastic protective cover, they couldn't tell if it was due to pain or fear. _Probably both_ , Potter's brain supplied. BJ lifted the cover off the litter to reveal the wounded soldier's face, young and filled with fear.

"I swear they get younger by the day," Colonel Potter muttered to BJ. The captain just nodded. He hadn't uttered a single syllable since leaving Radar's office. Potter knew that BJ was just scared for his best friend. Hell, he himself was going nuts thinking of all the things that could've possibly happened to his chief surgeon, but the fact that the usually cheerful and talkative man had shut down so quickly worried him. He resolved to keep a close eye on the man and talk to him about it after the wounded. He couldn't allow himself to get sidetracked short of making sure that the young man didn't go do something rash and stupid. He was in middle of triage and of the people who needed his attention at the moment, BJ would have to wait.

Potter undid the strap securing the wounded soldier to the external litter of the chopper. As soon as the soldier's hands were free he grabbed on to the nearest thing he could find: Colonel Potter's arm.

"Easy, easy," the colonel soothed but the soldier didn't loosen his grip on the older man's arm. If anything, he tightened his hold until what could be seen of his knuckles went white beneath the layer of blood and dirt that coated his hands.

"How is he?" the soldier asked. He glanced from one surgeon to the other, searching for the answer on their faces.

"Who?" Potter asked.

"The doctor. He got wounded after helping me, is he alright?"

Potter's head turned, seemingly of its own accord, to glance at BJ. The captain's eyes were wide and his face appeared to have gone a shade paler.

"Go ahead Hunnicutt, I got this one."

BJ didn't hesitate before running to the other side of the chopper. The pressure bandage knotted around the wounded soldier's chest was soaked with blood. A medical bag, which the soldier clutched in his right hand rested on the litter beside his legs. Blood soaked the bag, obscuring the Red Cross that BJ knew to be there.

BJ approached the soldier with caution. He wanted to rush over there and identify the soldier but couldn't help but wish that he never had to lift the cover obscuring the man's face. He attempted to take a calming breath but the air solidified in his throat, causing him to choke on the exhale.

Though BJ half expected it, his mind having jumped to the worst conclusion when the kid with the leg wound mentioned a doctor, he still found himself unprepared when he removed the cover over the wounded man's face to reveal his bunkmate.


End file.
